Thursday, February 18, 2016

Controversial South Dakota Bathroom Bill

While scrolling through Facebook the other night, I stumbled upon this piece of Women and Gender Studies news, and I thought I would share it. (I decided to give y'all a break from the NFL this week...your welcome.)

South Dakota is currently in the process of voting on a bathroom bill that would be the first of its kind. The bill states that a transgendered individual is to use the bathroom that they are physically and biologically assigned to and not the bathroom for the gender they associate with.

To be perfectly honest, my first reaction was shock. Shock in the sense that there hasn't been a bill like this one passed in any other state up to this point. In many of the readings in class a reoccurring theme seems to continue to pop-up, that of uncertainty--for the individual and society around them. As we see with this example, society still doesn't know how to handle this type of situation, and when they do, they handle it in the wrong way.

Its 2016 people (Mainly South Dakota...), transgendered people are all around us in every day life, and its awesome! It's what our great country stands for...to be able to be yourself...your true self! With this bill I feel like were going in the opposite direction that we should be moving.

We're moving backward, when we should be moving forward.

It's the job of the feminist movement and all who support it to stand up for what's right, continue moving our society in the right direction, and prevent silly bills like these from cluttering up my news feed.

3 comments:

Spence, this is a great find. I was looking through Facebook earlier this week and saw this piece as very applicable to our class as well. I honestly read this article and became very upset about how people try to make those who do not identify with being male or female feel excluded and that they do not have a place in society. What you are biologically assigned as at birth does not mean that you identify with that. All the videos we have seen where they interview transgender people is that they say before they made the switch that they felt so trapped inside that body and the pain they faced from not being able to be themselves was unbearable. Making people used the restrooms that they biologically identify with is completely messed up to me because your biological makeup does not determine what you really identify as. I could not agree with you more that this is definitely a step back for America and if this bill gets passed then there is going to be a lot of backfire from Americans and people worldwide. Great find Spence.

Thank you for posting about this! Human Rights Campaign emails have been blowing up my inbox about this and I find it absolutely shocking that it hasn't been more of an issue in the media. I think sometimes, once we take one step, everyone stops working and starts celebrating, before realizing that we still have so much more progress to go. Bills like this are in the progress of being passed all over the United States to marginalize transgender people and reinforce the idea that they will not be recognized. A lot of the results have to do with people reaching out to their representatives, talking about it, and getting others educated, as it's sometimes difficult to rely on mainstream media here.